Drawing from Memory: Context, Locus and the Difficult Journey (original) (raw)
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Forming Memory Through Architectural Drawings
MEGARON, 2021
Gaye BEZİRCİOĞLU SENVENLİ, Gülçin PULAT GÖKMEN Çizim bilgiyi anlama, ifade etme, deneyimleme ve depolamanın birlikte ortaya konduğu bilişsel bir aktivitedir. Bu makale, çizimin bireyin de-neyimlediği veya inşa ettiği ortam ile ilgili bilgileri işlerken, bu bilginin harici ve somutlaştırılmış bir belleği ortaya koyduğunu savunmaktadır. Çizim yolu ile oluşturulan bellek; bilgiyi tutma, yeniden etkinleştirme, yeniden yapılandırma gibi zihinsel belleğin işlem yetilerine sahip, ma-teryale aktarılmış bir bellek olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Çizimin ortaya koyduğu bilişsel süreç çizim eylemi ve çizilen materyali kapsamaktadır. Araştırmada etkileşimli bu süreç bilişin zihin ile sınırlı kalmadığını, çevre ile kurduğu ilişkide oluştuğunu savunan "dağıtılmış biliş" yaklaşımı üzerinden ele alınmaktadır. Bu yaklaşım ile çizilen temsiller ve zihinsel temsiller arasındaki ilişkiye odaklanılmakta, çizimde tanıma ve anlama süreçleri araştırılmaktadır. Araştırma, çizim yolu ile bellek oluşumunu sunulan teorik yaklaşım doğrultusunda deneyimlemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu bağlamda yapılan olgu çalışması aracılığı ile çizim sürecinde aktif olarak ortaya konan belleğin nasıl oluştuğunu sorgulamaktadır. Olgu çalışmasında, tanımlanan bir dizi çizim aktivitesi sonucu çizimlerde oluşan bellek izleri gözlemlenmiş, mekânsal deneyimin materyal üzerinde nasıl temsil edildiği analiz edilmiştir. Çalışmanın sonucunda mekân algısının nasıl oluştuğu ve bunun materyale nasıl aktarıldığı sunulan teorik yaklaşım doğrultusunda değerlendirilmiştir. Anahtar sözcükler: Dağıtılmış biliş; çizim; çizilmiş hafıza; hafıza oluşturmak; deneyimin izleri. ÖZ Drawing refers to a cognitive activity in which understanding, expressing, experiencing and storing information is performed simultaneously. This article argues that drawing reveals an external and embodied memory while processing information about the environment in which the individual is experienced or constructed. Memory formed by drawing is defined as a memory transferred to the material that has the processing abilities of mental memory such as retention, reactivation and reconstruction of the information. The cognitive process revealed by the drawing includes both the action and the material drawn. In the research, this reflective process is covered through the "distributed cognition" approach which argues that cognition is not limited to the mind but occurs inside the relationship with its environment. With this approach, the present article focuses on the relationship between the drawn and mental representations while investigating the process of recognition and recollection in drawing. The research aims to experience memory formation through drawing in line with the theoretical approach presented. In this context, it questions how the memory that is actively revealed in the drawing process is formed by means of a case study. In the case study, memory traces formed in the drawings as a result of a defined series of drawing activities were observed, and how the spatial experience was represented on the material was analysed. As a result of the study, how the perception of the space is formed and how it is transferred to the material is evaluated in line with the presented theoretical approach.
The development of new computer tools has greatly affected architectural language itself introducing a change within the history of a millenary discipline that could be easily paralleled to the discovery of linear perspective during the Renaissance. However, architectural drawing has not been affected in the same way –disregarding 3D modelling and computer renders-; that is to say, not the obvious revolution borne from the extraordinary capacity to work on a virtual three dimensional space and the possibility to anticipate the hyper-realistic final outlook of an architectural design but an equivalent key turn in 2D architectural drawing. In fact, architectural plans look quite the same now as they did before the advent of computer drawing tools. Our reflections here are based on the following questions that could be understood as starting hypothesis: Should architectural drawing disregard the theme of representation? Can a man transformed territory, a technologically advanced building or a changing cityscape be depicted or represented likewise? Is it possible to develop different graphic narratives to acquire connotative, evocative and reference values that may highlight the architectural qualities of every particular architectural project in a customized way according to its specific values? And last, but not least, can different drawing techniques and graphic resources generate design strategies? This paper discusses how architects may need to transform conventional modes of representation according to the content they want to convey. This is not only to explore the design strategy as a result of the graphic process developed throughout the project or the different graphic narratives used but also to reflect on the search for a specific mode of drawing. Each project should have its own way to be drawn. The final graphic results, however neat they may be, are not the main goal of this research; it is more a question of specific drawings for specific narratives, on the one hand, and the record of the graphic process as a design strategy, on the other. This research also arises from the assumption that we should accept as a starting point that the work of architecture can be transmitted through drawings, without abandoning the usual graphic codes, but enriching them through their processing or simple selection, making more effective graphic communication in order to evidence the qualities of the building as opposed to others that may be relegated, nuanced or denied. The use of diagrams, photo-collages or analytical drawings may well work as different notations of graphic thoughts. Finally, our scope of study is focused on a series of drawings produced during the diploma year of the degree in architecture at the University of Alicante in the Internationalization Studio.
Drawing: the active desire of design. A case of designing architecture
CROSSING THE LINE CONFERENCE, 2014
We aim to discuss that which generally refers to the contribution of drawing in the understanding of the design project, and particularly in relation to architecture. From a heuristic perspective, it is accepted that drawing recreates 'ways of seeing' which facilitate the project. Throughout the project, drawing contributes in supporting and stimulating the idea's development in accordance with the stratified process of design. We present a case study of the project drawings by considering the work of the architect Bernardo Rodrigues (Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal, 1972). He got a degree in Architecture from FAUP, Oporto University, 1996. Their architectural projects are spread across USA, China, Japan, Dubai, and of course Portugal. His work, focused on sensory perception and matter, has been the subject of national and internationally thoughts. According to Bernardo Rodrigues architecture discipline must returns closely back to nature, therefore, supports the idea of sustainability through ethics projected in architectural shape through the material building and its environment. "The twenty-first century should be the return to the classic and timeless categories of social planning and then urban", the architect said. The experimental nature of the projects leads to its fair recognition that is according to the original essence of architecture while thought about the human being on earth. The Bernardo Rodrigues work stands out through sustainability using materials that replying the energy yield but also to poetic dwelling the world. Thus, drawing is more than the heuristic representation of the project of architecture. The character of representation is contaminated by all that is marginal to design project is disseminated through it ethically and materially, joining opposites and differences through a poetic desire expressed on the drawing. The architectural images of Bernardo Rodrigues design results from a multiple methodological contemporary process which derives an architecture freed from traditional instrumental constraints and thus becomes an object that questions whether the world and their representations. Thus, the subject of representation goes beyond the functional consideration of the design, because the different instrumental drawings influences the perception of the subject and the author. The analysis seeks to contribute to a critical and multidisciplinary discussion between drawing and architecture through the drawing practice and designing in order to stimulate the interdisciplinary understanding in generating ideas and solutions that the architectural design should provide.
On graphic memory as a strategy for design history
Tradition, transition, trajectories: major or minor influences? [= Proceedings of the 9th International Committee for Design History and Design Studies], 2014
The expression ‘memória gráfica’ (literally, ‘graphic memory’) has been used in Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, more and more frequently, in the last years, in order to refer to a line of studies that intends to review the significance and value of visual artifacts, and in particular of printed ephemera, in the establishment of a sense of local identity through design. This paper intends to review the contexts in which this expression has been used within the field of research on visual artifacts in Latin America, and to discuss the relationships between the concept of ‘graphic memory’ and those of ‘print culture,’ ‘visual culture,’ and ‘material culture,’ setting up a proposal of how it can be applied as an approach to the history of graphic design in non-hegemonic countries.
Discussing the design through drawing. Transitional desire and procedural trajectories
ICDHS 9th International Design History and Design Studies. Tradition, transition, trajectories: major or minor influences? , 2014
Design represents the commitment of the artificial with nature-the artifact as symbolic cultural representation. Herein, drawing is the skill activity of the designer as renewed desire it transforming the world. Therefore, drawing is the material of design as medium of the representation, such as technical and interpretive expression of the author's imagination from an external program (brief). Hence, we propose drawing as a path performed by author's desire that symbolically reveals the subject of design in a specific level. The artifact as primordial income for the conceptual design process comes out of the drawing tools as practice that elevates the cultural representation. The pattern of drawing can be, symmetrical or asymmetrical, the link that joins two levels of the artifact, instrumental and critical, it becoming the basis for design's narrative. In this case, drawing skills convey and supporting the cultural expression showing design as a particular and symbolic cultural artifact. As context we refer the analysis of representative designers in the Portuguese geographic and cultural environment. We hypothesized that cultural and symbolic features result according to the artifact's identity. We seek the goal of the analysis according to the significance of drawing in the discipline of design. This research intends to scientifically integrate the ontological analysis of drawing in relation to design through the presented Portuguese examples.
DIALOGHI / DIALOGUES • visioni e visualità / visions and visuality
Since the development of drawing techniques and geometric projections in the Renaissance, architectural drawing has been the most relevant tool to mediate in the design process. Alberti' s conception of architectural representation and project anticipated in a practical way the idea of notational systems developed centuries later by Goodman. Thus, architects replaced master builders' professional tradition and gained the recognition for architecture as a liberal art and as a creative endeavour. Their ability to project and represent architecture anticipating not only its visual appearance but also its geometric constitution through drawing introduced a substantial change, allowing architects to convey their design to third parties due to the allographic nature of architectural drawing. This research attempts to focus on these issues in relation to ideation processes and graphic thinking derived from architects' drawing practice, questioned by some with the advent of digital tools. Sketches have been used by architects to establish a dialogue between them and their architectural creative labour which, to some extent, is triggered by the action of drawing itself. These freehand sketches are based on projections but the looseness and inaccuracy of them renders a degree of openness which is seminal within the architectural design process. These drawings are transformed into presentation drawings during the design process to reach a final form. The second type of drawings properly represent architecture in a more precise and notational way. These two types of drawings could be referred to as 'imaginative' and 'notational' in accordance to their different features, despite they are related to the same architectural referent. Yet, every phase in the project is creative as the project defines and anticipates built architecture.
Memory and Imagination in Museographic Design
Memory is related to learning. Its permanence or retentiveness, and the reconstruction of a recollection is "a cognitive act […] the ascription of past to a present mental content…." Our memories are kept, travelling from the immediate memory to the short term memory, and are recovered in areas of the long term memory by specific motivations of external agents, personal and deliberate, or contextual. These tests are usually based on information provided by the sensory memory, strictly adverting to visual information, practically iconic, in which the isomorphic conditions, that is, similitude of the represented object with a previous image of it, tend to vary. It is common for the psychological aspect not to consider subtle factors of imagination and museographic objects, such as level of abstraction, line thickness, texture and colours, as well as the contextual references that each person may have in regards to what is being represented: a clock has variants of reification, it can be analog or digital, portable, table clock, wall clock, antique or contemporary, chromatically sober or oversaturated, and it can be related to all the possible contexts such as house, school, office, public transportation, etc., all of which are circumstances of the imagination.
Drawing and images of design. Representation and meaning.
EAD-European Academy of Design, 2007
This abstract is based on the research being conducted on the relationship between design and drawing, whose results have been presented at various congresses. The aim of the research is to clarify the intervention of drawing in design, by differentiating between “object” and “image” and between the “symbolic character” and the “form of representation” by demonstrating that the efficiency of the project is based on conflict generated by the act of drawing in itself. Based on the triangular classification of design as author-programme- technology and drawing as representation- classification-imagination, it can be argued that: the object’s identity arises from the confrontation between representation and the image, thus questioning its unity. In other words the way of representing the object through a technical mediation referring to an abstract concept (the act of drawing), of symbolic function, and of attributing meaning to the symbol, insofar as it refers to object. This paper intends to approach drawing as the language that makes the appearance of the images of design possible. The images of design function as double: _ object of representation whilst represented image (physical representation); _object of desire whilst promoter of a story of subjective experiences and emotional relationships. Examples will be given. We consider the specificity of drawing through two possibilities: _representation as the action of drawing in the object’s presence; _representation as the action of drawing in the object’s absence. Drawing as a instrument of the project participates in the duality of the images: as representation of the idea (concept) and as action that provokes the emergence of the object before an interested and desiring subject. However, under these conditions, drawing exists as an action that does not dilute itself in the representation, since object and image, as differentiated and implied entities, relate to each other. Drawing is the place where the object’s necessary differentiation and uncertainty manifest themselves. Keywords: representation, image, symbolic, object, desire.
Arts and Design Studies Impact of Architecture on Forming Our Personal Memories
Time underlies many interesting human behaviors. Thus, the question of how to represent time in connectionist models is critical. One approach is to represent time implicitly by its effects on processing rather than explicitly (as in a spatial representation). Memory is the primary processing of man through time.Many studies have focused on the memory of architecture. The "Art of Memory" written by Frances Yates (1966). This classic study of how people learned to retain vast stores of knowledge before the invention of the printed page, Frances traced the art of memory from its treatment by Greek orators, through its Gothic transformations in the Middle Ages, to the occult forms it took in the Renaissance, and finally to its use in the seventeenth century. This study was the first to relate the art of memory to the history of Architecture and culture as a whole was revolutionary when it first appeared and continued to mesmerize readers with those clear insights.In another word, he described how people used architecture to help their memories. (Architecture can bring back a lot of memories). The aim of this study is to focus on the relationship between our individual memories and architecture and if there is a continuous familiarity of the place within our minds, presents as an inextricably bound.
Within the Space of Drawing: Lines and the Locus of Creation in Architectural Design
Journal of Research in Philosophy and History 7.1: 36–69, 2024
This paper considers the practice of drawing lines in the context of architectural design. The core argument is that drawing lines generates the conditions for creative thought. Moreover, this initial claim is discussed in the context of the creative process in architectural design, as lines play an indispensable role in the locus of creation. First, the so-called "representational paradigm" about hand drawing is critically discussed, leading to the exposition of a new philosophical account regarding drawing. This new position consists of three theses: (I) it regards the drawing surface as a topos or "space of drawing"; (II) it regards drawings as situated figurations; (III) and it regards lines as processes. Jointly, these three theses form the "performative paradigm", casting each aspect of the drawing process in terms of an unfolding dynamic in which inhabitative imagination and aesthetic sensibility play decisive roles. Lastly, these conclusions are formalized in a design model.